Glazin'

Hardly Art; 2011

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Garage rock was never an album's game, and-- in the midst of yet another revival-- that hasn't changed. Scuzzbucket strum and teenage truth will always fare far better as short, sharp shocks; then as now, the impact of a song like the Seeds' mighty "Pushin' Too Hard" is dulled by the half-dozen soundalikes on the LP from whence it came. Good as many of them are, that this new crop has yet to produce a truly classic LP isn't terribly surprising-- the song's the thing, cohesion's almost antithetical. So it is with Floridian up-and-comers Jacuzzi Boys' sophomore set, Glazin': five fine 45s masquerading as a fun, slight 10-song LP.

Between their sweetly shopworn lyrics, their not-quite-frenetic pacing, and all those ooh-augmented choruses, there's nothing new under the Glazin' sun. The Boys have settled down some since their last LP, 2009's No Seasons: volumes mostly steer clear of the red zone; the songcraft's less rollicking, more measured; and the occasional glint of pop sheen flickers at its surface. Singer/guitarist Gabriel Alcala's maintained the snide edge in his voice, but he doesn't have the fire in his belly he did a couple of years ago. At this point, these teenaged kicks of their work feel less lived than lived-in, lacking the manic edge and the neuron-branding melodies of the genre's leading lights. The songs go down easy but, with a few exceptions, leave little aftertaste. When you're constantly flipping a 45, that's a good problem to have; when you're talking an LP-- even a shortie like Glazin'-- the amnesiac feel foregrounds what's lacking.

Opener "Vizcaya" is a blast, a rallying cry of ascending melody and youthful insouciance that gets it done in record time. And the one-two punch of closers "Los Angeles" and "Koo Koo With You"-- the first, a half-affectionate, half-dismissive take on left coast life, and the second, a shapeshifting half-nonsensical come-on-- are far and away the album's best. Brimming with personality and oddly pitched humor, they're really the only tracks on Glazin' that don't sound like covers of songs you can't quite place. (They would've made for a killer single.) Elsewhere, "Silver Spheres" throws a little Detroit thunder in there to fine effect, and the bouncy "Libras and Zebras" feels especially effortless. As for the rest? Carefully crafted, smartly executed, and reasonably lively garage-rock that's all just a little too on-the-nose to inspire much beyond agreeable indifference.

In an era when the surfeit of garage-rock bands need to push personality and melody harder than ever, Glazin's got a bit of both, an abundance of neither. The beefy but slightly sterile production buffs out some of the gnarl of their earlier work, which doesn't do them many favors. And the once-raucous band's performances seem a bit reeled in, too. More than anything, though, Glazin's sneer'n'strut is just too much of a pretty good thing: One or two at a time, these songs work wonders, but over half an hour, the Boys' retrograde sneer and strut proves a bit too safe and samey.